Vendée

The Vendée is a department in western France, with its principal towns being La Roche-sur-Yon, Challans, Les Herbiers, Olonne-sur-Mer, Les Sables-d'Olonne, Fontenay-le-Comte, Chateau-d'Olonne, Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, Lucon, and Aizenay. The Hundred Years' War, the French Wars of Religion, and the French Revolutionary Wars turned the Vendée into a battleground. In 1793, the people of the Vendée rose in rebellion against the French Republic in reaction to the harsh conditions imposed upon the Catholic Church by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the government's conscription program, and the War in the Vendée (1793-96) saw the conservative peasants form the "Catholic and Royal Army" and attempt to launch a counter-revolution. 240,000 people were killed before the guerrilla war ended in 1796. In 1815, during Napoleon I's Hundred Days, the Vendée again revolted in favor of the Bourbon monarchy, and Jean Maximilien Lamarque led 10,000 French troops to pacify the region. In 1832, the Duchess of Berry attempted to lead a Legitimist uprising in the region, but this revolt - the last major revolt in the Vendée - was crushed. In 2013, the Vendée had a population of 655,506 people, and the region was still a strongly conservative region.